Our first Business Buzz was warmly welcomed, with lots of emails and support – thanks in particular to Lorna Young of Indigo Words who said: “Just a quick email to say how much I enjoyed Scottish Business Buzz – it’s wonderful to be able to concisely read what other BfS members have been doing. Hope you get lots of members contributing to it!”

Scottish Business Buzz is a collection of business and economic news from around Scotland that will also showcase the news and achievements of the Business for Scotland membership. If you’d like us to consider your business news to feature in a future business news update, please email the press release / story to Michelle Rodger

BUSINESS leaders are supporting an initiative to bring more prestigious and lucrative conferences and business events to Perth and Kinross.

Business Tourism for Scotland (BTfS) has teamed up with Invest in Perth, the investment campaign of Perth and Kinross Council, to host the city’s leg of the new Think Scotland, Think Conference (TSTC) initiative.

This new economic strategy should include measures to boost productivity and address inequality, including a new export strategy; investment in infrastructure; investment in innovation and looking to deliver a simpler taxation system.

N-56 is backing proposals for fiscal autonomy for Scotland, devolving fiscal powers from Westminster to Holyrood and highlighting that with the right political will this could be established in as little as four years. The report noted that with this and the right economic strategy in place Scottish GDP could increase by 86% from a baseline of £153bn in 2012 to £282bn over 25 years.

POLLS show that a significant majority of Scots support devo max, meaning all powers transferring from Westminster except shared monetary policy, defence and foreign affairs. So taxation and spending, or full fiscal autonomy (FFA), is an intrinsic and indistinguishable keystone of devo max. Without FFA in the mix you don’t have home rule, you have a constitutional fudge and the worst of both worlds with Westminster controlling the key economic levers and a Scottish Parliament with one hand tied behind its back.

It’s a fact that financial services companies are maybe the most reluctant businesses when it comes to changes in the way they work and it is understandable up to a point, as they have to do with money and we all know that the money makes the world go round!

RONALD Reagan helped shape modern political campaigning, as his Hollywood star looks and faked sincerity set the scene for decades. His campaigning mantra was simple: “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.”

THE head of Scotland’s most successful social enterprise start-up agency has insisted that the country’s small business community has blossomed and gone from strength to strength over the past six years.

Shockingly weak. That’s the only way to describe news highlighting the continuing struggles of Britain’s manufacturers last month.

It’s easy to see why the health check of industry from Markit/CIPS raised eyebrows. The snapshots of the three most important sectors of the economy – manufacturing, construction and services – are closely watched because they are the first evidence of the state of the economy in the month and they look forward rather than backward.

The Westminster parties’ attacks on full fiscal responsibility (FFR) for Scotland and the IFS figures being presented unchallenged in the metropolitan media are so fundamentally flawed it is difficult to know where to start. Going back to fundamentals its worth remembering the whole point of a national economy is to create prosperity and security for the population and definitely not to grow the economy for the sole benefit of the financial markets.

Fuelled by major transport projects such as the new Forth road bridge, the Borders railway and a property building upturn concentrating in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the sector saw a 13 per cent expansion during 2014.

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